If there were always
the truth in media, there would be no need for the Truth in Media

An epilogue 2006-05

Aug 29, 2006

Unsung
Heroes of Serbian Air Force: "Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like
a Bee"

NATO's
Secret Losses

An Epilogue to NATO's 1999 war on
Serbia: How Serbian Air
Force Outwitted World's Greatest Military Force and Inflicted Heavy Losses
on NATO Planes, Helicopters and Personnel in Bosnia, Albania

FROM SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
BALKAN
AFFAIRS

The "NATO Doctrine"

"A military alliance of 19 nations and 780 million people; with over half of the world's
gross economic product, possessing two-thirds of the global military power, ganged up on a
tiny nation of 10 million. For 78 days, NATO terrorized the people of Serbia, dropping
23,000 bombs and missiles on them in 36,000 sorties. Yet the Serbs remained
unbowed and uncowed. This is not hearsay. I saw their defiance with my own eyes during the
six days I had spent
under
NATO's bombardment."

"Bomb the civilians and the civilian structures until that country's military
can't stand to watch it anymore." (Col.
David Hackworth, one of America's most decorated soldiers)

NATO's Secret Losses

How Serbs Launched
Stealth Raids Destroying Scores of NATO Aircraft on the Ground

Unsung Heroes of Serbian
Air Force: "Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee"

By Bob Djurdjevic

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona, Aug 29, 2006 - Sometimes, the
truth comes out in dribbles, years after an event has taken place.
Two new stories out of Belgrade about NATO's 1999 war on Serbia make this
point. To appreciate their significance, however, we must turn our
clocks back to April 16, 1999...

That Friday, Day 24
of NATO's war on Serbia, NATO had launched its first daytime bombing raids
on Belgrade. The air raid sirens went off mid-morning, just as this
writer was meeting with the Serbian Patriarch Pavle, the head of the
Serbian Orthodox Church. From then on, daytime attacks became
routine. Such an escalation of war was a clear sign that NATO
leaders were getting exasperated. The bombing was supposed to last
7-10 days and result in a surrender of Serbia, according to a pre-war
estimate by General Wesley Clark, then the supreme NATO commander.
Yet here we were, already in the fourth week of the war, and there was no
let up in the Serbian resolve to fight back.

What followed was a wild and woolly Saturday night,
Day 25 of NATO's war on Serbia.
Salvos of anti-aircraft artillery fire (AAA) filled in the audio gaps
between detonations of NATO bombs and missiles. It was a horrifying
symphony of death and destruction orchestrated from Brussels by one General
Clark, and from Washington by one draft dodger Bill Clinton. Ground
shook as the cold spring air whipped up by explosions occasionally swirled
around this writer's head like a mini-tornado. Belgrade was getting
it, Novi Sad was being pounded (the second largest city in Serbia), Sremska
Mitrovica was also taking heavy hits. But the worst off was Mount Fruska
Gora, that lies between these three cities. It was being
raked over by NATO bombers as if it were a meadow (click on the image left
for a detailed map of this area and of the Balkans).

That Saturday night, as this writer was sending you live reports from
his laptop in the midst of this mayhem, first from Belgrade, then from the
countryside near Sremska Mitrovica (see "Angry
Skies over Serbia," Apr 17 and the map - left), a bold plan was
being hatched in the Serb military headquarters. While the Serbs
made NATO leaders believe that they were destroying Serbian tanks and
planes (which later on turned out to be cardboard dummies cleverly made to
look like real McCoys - see "How
Serb Dummies Fooled NATO Dummies," June 1999 and the NATO
Dummies UPDATE, July 1999), the Serbian Air Force was to stage two
raids into neighboring countries, destroying scores of NATO aircraft on
the ground there. They were to be a lightening strikes back at NATO,
in which the Serbian warplanes were to "float like a butterfly, sting
like a bee," to borrow the words of Muhammad Ali.

And
that's exactly what happened around 1:30PM on Sunday, April 18, roughly
the time this writer was returning to Belgrade from his overnight field
trip to the Serbian countryside. He found the Serb capital
threatened by a huge toxic cloud caused by the overnight bombing of the
Pancevo oil refinery and chemical factory (see left photo).
One could not help but think... where was Al Gore's concern for the
environment then and there? (Bill Clinton's vice president was one
of the chief proponents of NATO's war on Serbia). Oh well...

Meanwhile, it's interesting to note that neither Bosnia nor Albania,
where these two Serb air strikes took place, are NATO countries. But
"might makes right." NATO had used them anyway to launch
military operations against Serbia as if they were its home turf. So
they became fair game for Serb retaliation. This infuriated the
mighty NATO into unleashing a fiery fury against Serbian civilian targets,
such as those described in the opening paragraphs, and even the post
office in
Uzice, a city near the Ponikve airport from which the Serbian warplanes
took off [click on the thumbnail image (right) to enlarge a detailed map].

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" - Casius Clay's
a.k.a. Mohammad Ali's famous boxing line describes aptly what happened in
the early phases of NATO's war on Serbia. After it became evident that there would be no quick surrender of
Serbia, NATO started to change its tactics. On April 8, 1999, eight
NATO fighter planes arrived at the Tuzla airport in northeastern Bosnia
(see above map), tasked with offensive bombing missions of special targets
in Serbia (Tuzla is a predominantly Muslim city which was then as now
under control of the central Bosnian Muslim government in Sarajevo).
Prior to April 8, the Tuzla airport was primarily intended as the landing
destination for NATO bombers hit by AAA fire over Serbia. So as of
mid-April, there were 12 damaged NATO fighter planes on the ground there
as well as four rescue helicopters, and several transport aircraft.

A
strike force consisting of six Eagles J22 (left photo), two MIG 21s, and
one Seagull G4 (right)
was assembled at the Ponikve airport. At about 1PM on Sunday April
18, they took off from the Ponikve airport ready to pounce on NATO planes
at the Tuzla airport, a 25 to 30 minute-flight. They flew low and
arrived undetected by the Tuzla radar, which was sabotaged by a local Serb
sympathizer. Even the AWAC surveillance plances failed to notice
them until they were only 6 miles from Tuzla, too late for the NATO
aircraft to take off. The Serb Air Force squadron struck at exactly
1:30PM.

According to Major Gavrilovic, who piloted one of the Eagles, he
released his bombs on a group of damaged NATO planes on the ground, then
turned around and came back to attack the helicopters, too. He was
followed by three more Eagles who unloaded their deadly cargo to select
targets. Two remaining Eagles stayed behind to mop up and hit the
NATO planes getting ready to take off, as well as the eight fighter jets
that had just arrived in Tuzla on April 8. The two MIGs and the
Seagull finished off the NATO sitting ducks with missiles and machine gun
strafing.

The entire action over Tuzla took about 15 minutes. One of the
Eagles was downed on the return flight to base by a ground-to-air missile,
killing its pilot, Lt. Col. Mihailo V. from Kragujevac. The other
eight Serbian Air Force aircraft returned to the Ponikve airport. A
MIG damaged by a ground-to-air missile, flown by Major Zeljko M. from Novi
Sad, was forced to an emergency landing some six miles from the Ponikve
runways.

Confirmed damage assessment at the Tuzla airport was 17 NATO aircraft
and three rescue helicopters destroyed. Some unofficial observers
claim that 21 NATO airplanes and three helicopters were destroyed, and
that the subsequent ammunition and fuel explosions also took two out two
transport aircraft. What reportedly caused special outrage among the
NATO "supermen" was the loss of 11 of its officers, pilots and
ground air force personnel in this raid alone.

TiM Ed: Yet here was Bill Clinton,
brazenly lying through his teeth at the end of the war, telling the
American public that the U.S. and NATO had suffered no combat casualties
during the 78-day war. Par for the course from the President who
had already been impeached by the House of Representatives for lying,
only to be rescued from disgraceful White House eviction from power by
his pals in the Senate.

But the hapless NATO leaders took out their rage on Serb
civilians. For three days in a row, NATO aviation targeted Uzice and
its vicinity, including the city center (a shopping area and the post
office that are of no military or strategic value). They also
dropped over 80 bombs and missiles on the Ponikve airport. But none
of the airport's vital systems or aircraft were damaged. Ponikve
continued to function normally till the end of the war.

The most important strategic victory for Serbia that the April 18 Tuzla
raid represented was that the Bosnian airport was never again used by NATO
during the bombing campaign against Serbia.

TiM Ed: Too close for comfort, we
suppose. Much easier to beat up on civilians working at post
offices, shopping centers, hospitals or schools - some of NATO's
favorite targets, or drop cluster bombs in city centers, such as in Nis
in May of 1999 (see "Tour
of Serbia, Stage II," Sep 1999).

Tirana Airport,
Albania

Strikes
Two and Three - April 13 and 26, 1999 - Jab and Uppercut

"Float Like a
Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee:" Jabs and Uppercut

Especially brazen and daring were the two Serbian Air Force attacks on
NATO aircraft stationed at the Tirana
airport in Albania which also took place in April 1999. That's where
NATO had positioned a squadron of 12 Apache helicopters that were supposed
to provide air support for the "Atlantic Brigade," a ground
force that was supposed to attack Serbia from Albania, across the Kosara
and Gorozup passes. The Atlantic Brigade consisted of some 6,000
Albanian volunteers from Diaspora, who were trained by American military
instructors. Along with the KLA terrorists who operated inside
Kosovo, but retreated to Albania, the Atlantic Brigade and the KLA were to
occupy take the southern part of Kosovo since the NATO air campaign had
not produced the desired results. So altogether, this was a ground
force of some 20,000 fighters, including the foreign, mostly American,
instructors and special forces.

The first air raid in Albania by the Serbian Air Force took place on
April 13, when four Serbian warplanes attacked the preparation camp of the
Atlantic Brigade near Kamenica in northern Albania. One of the
Apaches was destroyed and serious losses inflicted on the Atlantic Brigade
troops. This was repeated on May 5, when three Serbian Eagles and
two Seagulls attacked the Atlantic Brigade several times within short
intervals.

But one of the most spectacular actions the Serbian Air Force had
undertaken against NATO took place on April 26, when the U.S. Apache air
base near Tirana was attacked. That was a particularly risky
operation as the flight from Ponikve airport to Tirana is almost an hour
(54 minutes). So there was plenty of time for the technologically
superior NATO aviation and the AWACs to detect the Serbian warplanes and
take defensive action. As it turned out, they did not. And the
result was devastating for NATO.

Two Seagulls G-4S took off from the Ponikve and Golubovci (near
Podgorica, Montenegro) airports synchronized to arrive in Tirana about 20
minutes apart. The two Seagulls from Golubovci (Montenegro) arrived
first, undetected, unleashing their fury on the unsuspecting NATO ground
troops and helicopters. About 2o minutes later, the other two
Seagulls (that had taken off from Ponikve) arrived, also undetected before
reaching the target, having flown low through canyons and mountain ranges
of southern Serbia and Kosovo (see the above map).

In the wake of the two air raids, five Apache helicopters were
destroyed. All four Seagulls returned to base, though not
necessarily the one from which they took off. The strategic
significance of this attack was that NATO never used the Apache
helicopters again for the duration of the war. And the ground
offensive from Albania that was supposed to wrest Kosovo from Serbia never
materialized.

(Translated and adapted from an article by Zvonimir
Trajkovic, a political analyst in Belgrade, Serbia).

Epilogue

TiM Ed: But while the Serbian military and her
people fought on bravely against the much stronger enemy despite
incredible odds, Serbia's strongman, the late Slobodan Milosevic, whose
intransigence was the root of the problem, suddenly got weak-kneed and
negotiated a "peace agreement" (read surrender) that
effectively ceded control of Kosovo to NATO. Serbia's
subsequent Washington-controlled puppet governments continued on
the same path. So now it seems just a matter of time before the
cradle of the Serbian civilization (Kosovo) officially ceases to be a
part of Serbia.